Can Female Leaders Be True to Themselves? - Building Gender Balanced Business

BY TRACY E. HOUSTON

We are now moving into a time where women leaders recognize that knowing who they are and using their natural strengths is more influential, productive and inspiring than settling for the more limited parameters of the victim role — struggling to break through a glass ceiling.

An unintended and unproductive consequence of the “victim” mentality from the women’s movement is that many conversations about succession and retention of women today are based on how the external world keeps them from breaking through the glass ceiling.

While some of this may be true, the internal belief systems of humans are very powerful; they keep us from presenting ourselves and our talents so that we are considered for advancement. Therefore, it is restricting to women to look at their careers in this way.

Our roles and the beliefs around them are deeply ingrained in us and are VERY difficult to get beyond. For good or bad, as women, we are seen as helpers, nurturers or seductresses. Trying to get out of this collective stereotype we try to hide our differences by wearing clothes that disguise our bodies; we start movements that promote our rights; we play the traditional roles with such wit that we are able to benefit from them.

But none of these methods of behaviour promote our real selves and our differences that produce competitive advantage. Maintaining the more dated strategies for expressing our leadership keeps women from knowing the power and influence of being real.

While an equitable approach may have been helpful at the beginning of the women’s movement, being in touch with how you are treated unfairly is a limited platform to influence others and blurs any focus on developing and communicating a woman’s personal and professional strengths.

Breaking out of this historical straitjacket will be liberating: there is extraordinary vitality released when women become responsible for their own happiness and the authenticity that accompanies a life fully lived.